If Women’s Lives Were Sacred: Christianity, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Equal Justice
Author Allyson McKinney Timm, a human rights lawyer and Christian feminist scholar, exposes the global and domestic realities of gender-based oppression and calls the Church to confront the suffering it too often ignores.
January 2027 (T&T Clark/Bloomsbury)
“The most comprehensive treatment I have ever seen regarding the God-given sacredness of women’s lives”
-from the foreword by David P. Gushee, author of The Sacredness of Human Life
About the Book
Drawing on decades of work across Africa and the United States, Allyson McKinney Timm reveals how abuses such as child marriage, lethal violence against women, culturally sanctioned rape, and the exploitation of widows devastate communities. Through the stories of survivors she has encountered, she shows how these harms transcend borders—and how Americans often overlook similar injustices in their own communities. Her critique of white saviorism underscores the need for honest reckoning with the roles both church and state play in perpetuating gendered and racialized violence.
Rooted in biblical insight and Christian ethical reasoning, the book argues that securing women's human rights is the most faithful way to advance scriptural commitments to safety, inclusion, provision, and equity for those pushed to the margins. McKinney Timm highlights how American democracy and dominant church institutions have failed to uphold this mandate, and she points to prophetic voices past and present who illuminate a more just path.
She affirms equality under the law as a principle that honors Christian convictions about God, Christ, and the dignity of every person. True gender equality, she stresses, safeguards persons of every identity—including our LGBTQ+ siblings, who face profound discrimination and threat. Equality before the law emerges as essential to any vision of gender and racial justice aligned with beloved community. In the United States, this begins with the Equal Rights Amendment, a hard-won reform with redemptive potential for righting the nation’s misogynistic wrongs.
Combining the precision of a lawyer with the moral imagination of a pastor, McKinney Timm offers both analytic clarity and spiritual depth. She gives a compelling account of how greater gender equality can nurture the flourishing of women, girls, and the communities they sustain.
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About the Author
Allyson McKinney Timm is a human rights lawyer, Christian feminist scholar, faith and justice leader, and visionary advocate for gender equality. For over two decades, she has defended the dignity and rights of women and other marginalized groups in the United States and globally. Her impact promoting justice, equality, and human rights has spanned the nonprofit, private, and academic sectors.
After founding Justice Revival in 2017, a Christian nonprofit focused on advancing human rights in the United States, Allyson was named “one of ten faith leaders to watch” by the Center for American Progress. An award-winning writer and frequent public speaker on issues of gender, faith, women’s rights, and social justice, Allyson’s writing has appeared in Religion News Service, The Christian Century, Sojourners, California Lawyer, The Independent, USA Today, and others.
Allyson earned her JD and MBA at Georgetown and her Master of Divinity at Yale. She is a lay leader in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and is based in the Washington, DC area.
Inside the Book
What People Are Saying
“Christian faith declares every human being to be created in the image of God, dearly beloved by God and endowed with sacred worth. Yet child marriage, coerced reproduction, and domestic violence are all-too-common realities in the lives of countless women. Slicing powerfully through age-old tactics of obfuscation and misdirection, McKinney Timm shows how no Christian articulation of the demands of neighbor-love can be complete if it ignores the vast injustices being inflicted today on women and girls, whether around the globe or right at home. A clarion call!”
Jennifer A. Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics, Yale Divinity School and author of The Great Wheel of Being (Yale University Press, 2026)
“This unflinching, Christian ethical investigation of women’s rights and sacredness makes the case for policy changes we need right now. If Women’s Lives Were Sacred seamlessly weaves together a global view, including U.S., Ugandan, and Sierra Leone contexts. By probing public practices that endanger women’s wellbeing, it accessibly explains the bite of discrimination while fervently stirring up a commitment to equality.”
Traci C. West, Professor Emerit of Christian Ethics and African American Studies, Drew Theological School and author of Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence (NYU Press, 2019)
“What would it look like if every Christian aspired to a world in which the life of every girl child, and every grown woman, was treated as ineffably precious, sacred in God’s sight, worthy of reverence and respect? In this trailblazing and authoritative work, Allyson McKinney Timm charts the path between here and there.”
David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University and author ofThe Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World’s Future (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2013)
“In a world where anti-feminist Christian movements in the U.S. and globally are rolling back hard-won gains for women, Allyson McKinney Timm offers the brave, biblically rooted, and morally urgent rebuttal the church needs: women’s lives are sacred, and any Christianity worthy of the name must defend their full humanity, agency, and rights. She calls the church to repent of its complicity in gender oppression and become what it was always meant to be—a force for liberation, justice, and equal dignity.”
Rev. Jennifer Butler, Founder, Faith in Democracy and author of Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized (Pluto Press, 2006)
“Allyson McKinney Timm writes in the prophetic tradition of nineteenth-century Christian abolitionists and contemporary Christian feminist scholars to demonstrate the divine imperative to honor women’s rights as human rights. If Women’s Lives Were Sacred will empower congregations, legal scholars, ethicists, and feminists alike as we contend with the ongoing global crisis of femicide.”
Jaimie D. Crumley, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Ethnic, Gender, and Disability Studies, The University of Utah
“With If Women’s Lives Were Sacred, Allyson McKinney Timm delivers a stirring exploration into the Christian character of women’s equal human rights that could not be more urgently needed. She provides a sweeping legal analysis with layered historical revelations and moral insights to argue that women's rights are central to social justice. In this riveting and essential book, McKinney Timm reminds us how radical Christian compassion can advance gender justice through advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment.”
Rebecca DeWolf, PhD, author of Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (University of Nebraska Press, 2021)
“In her book, If Women’s Lives Were Sacred, Allyson McKinney Timm gives us a true and vital account of women’s lives and rights in a world that too often violates their dignity, proclaiming an urgent call for the Church to advance human rights and laws that sustain them. This book is essential reading for Christians who care for justice and a searing rebuke to those who aim to control and exploit women.”
Jeff Baker, Clinical Professor of Law, Associate Dean of Experiential Learning, Director of the Community Development Clinic, The University of Alabama School of Law
“Women’s struggles for full humanity in the bedroom, boardroom, legislature, and battlefield become harder every day against a backdrop of White Christian Nationalism. Nothing less than human sacredness is at stake. Allyson McKinney Timm offers welcome, well documented insights into how progressive feminist Christian teachings can reshape the landscape.”
Dr. Mary E. Hunt, Co-director, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) and co-editor of New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views (Skylight Paths, 2010)
“Weaving together stories, history, theology, and law, Allyson McKinney Timm calls Christians to claim women’s human rights as a matter of faith and to reckon with the church’s role in denying them. With nuance and compassion, If Women’s Lives Were Sacred affirms bodily autonomy and reproductive choice while honoring the sacredness of bearing new life, the moral conscience of pregnant people, and the holy work of justice for women.”
Rev. Katey Zeh, Chief Executive Officer, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and author of A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice Movement (Broadleaf Books, 2022)
“McKinney Timm offers us a powerful assertion that addressing sexism and women’s subordination is essential to any movement in support of human rights. She capably places her argument at the doorstep of the church and the state, urging both to do more to protect women’s bodily integrity and reproductive rights. Her case for actualizing the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. could not be more timely.”
Marie M. Fortune, Founder of FaithTrust Institute and author of Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited (The Pilgrim Press, 2005)
“As a secular, gender-equality human rights advocate and scholar for over thirty years, I can attest that the promise of If Women’s Lives Were Sacred flows beyond those working to support women’s rights from within Christianity.
For all of us who seek to build sustainable coalitions across faith and secular movements for 'equal justice', as McKinney Timm names our goal, her clear elaboration of first principles, articulation of common interests, honest reckoning with tensions and historical accountability, and insistence on the transformative potential of faith creates a space for meaningful and long-term work across movements in these hard and regressive times.”
Ali Miller, Faculty Co-Director, Global Health Justice Partnership of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health; Professor in the Practice, Yale Jackson School for Global Affairs; Affiliated Faculty, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Council, Yale Law School
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